The Mall of America wants to add a grocery store to serve its growing base of customers, hotel guests and office workers.

The megamall draws 40 million visitors annually and is starting to consider itself more of a city within a city. Radisson Blu and JW Marriott hotels have opened at MOA and a new office tower draws thousands of workers to the shopping center daily.

“We’re really in need of services," said Carrie Charleston, vice president of leasing at Mall of America. "We would love to see grocery or a marketplace."

It remains to be seen how much interest grocers have in MOA, though. The Bloomington retail center would be more attractive for a grocery tenant if apartments or more permanent housing were added, said David Livingston, a grocery expert with Pewaukee, Wis.-based DJL Research.

Nonetheless, here's some possible tenants and opinions on whether they'd be a good fit:

Target Corp.

Rick Shea, owner of Shea Food Consultants in Chanhassen, said Minneapolis-based Target Corp. jumped to the front of his mind as a good fit for grocery and services at the mall, partially because it's a local company.

"It has both general merchandise and food," Shea said. "It could be a different concept compared to their normal supercenters."

Target has grown small-format stores in dense urban areas lately and could do a similar store at the mall.

Dave Brennan, a marketing professor at the University of St. Thomas, disagreed that Target (NYSE: TGT) would be a good fit at MOA due to its ongoing struggles in grocery sales.

"Target is really not distinguished in terms of its grocery offerings," Brennan said. "They're really adrift with whatever their strategy is."

Lunds & Byerlys or Kowalski's Markets

Both locally based grocers could be options at the mall because they have a strong assortment of fresh and prepared foods. Both companies also tend to have counter-service restaurant concepts inside their stores to drive traffic.

"Lunds & Byerlys ... they could do a small-format store with prepared foods," Livingston said. "They could also add a restaurant component. Lunds is not afraid to go out of the box."

The challenge for Edina-based Lunds & Byerlys or Woodbury-based Kowalski's would be finding a way to adapt to mall crowds. The companies usually open stores in more suburban shopping centers.

"The shopper [at Mall of America] would be different," Shea said. "It wouldn’t be a weekly or monthly shopper. That might be a challenge to them."

Hy-Vee Inc.

A traditional Hy-Vee store would be too large for the mall at this point, but the Iowa-based grocer has been experimenting with a small-format convenience store. It's opening one of those in Lakeville. However, the concept may be too early in its testing phase to open at Mall of America, Brennan said.

Several Twin Cities retail brokers also have speculated that Hy-Vee could be an option to fill large, vacant department store spaces at area malls, like closed Sears and J.C. Penney stores.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods Market Inc., now owned by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), would be another option. Amazon could make a splashy move by opening a new store in a prominent location like MOA.

Whole Foods also has strong healthy and grab-and-go selections that would be attractive offerings for shoppers and nearby hotel guests.

Wild card candidates

Brennan mentioned that a restaurant-focused marketplace concept, like Italy-based Eataly, would be a good fit for the mall with its combination of kitchen supplies and food.

Eataly also was mentioned as a fit for the former Macy's building in downtown Minneapolis. However, the company in March denied rumors of expanding into Minneapolis.

Shea also mentioned Michigan-based Meijer Inc. or Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) as companies that could open at the megamall to make a splash in the Twin Cities grocery market.